How I Became A Brewer - Part 3

In 2003 I went to work for 3M in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a Management Information Systems internship. While there, I serendipitously looked up Beer & Wine in the phone book. Inside of a hardware store was a wine-making supply store and I bought some Traminer grape concentrate from Australia. (Evidently related to Gewürztraminer grapes.) I made a dandy white wine from it and designed my own labels.

I also met a co-worker Denny Lynard, who made fabulous homemade wine from canned peaches and other unusual sources, and he set me up with an Apple Wine recipe. I wanted to continue my experiments back at the University for my last semester, but I didn't have a lot of money. So I reduced my batch quantity to one-gallon. The next wine I made was a gallon of Montmorency Cherry Wine from Michigan juice, and a dandy Mead, which was more than fantastic seven years later. (I have a lot of patience.) Then I graduated and moved to the San Francisco area of California.

When I got to California in 1984, I considered making homemade wine, but decent wine could be had so cheaply. So my boyfriend and I decided to make beer instead, and he had some recipes from an old college buddy at U of Illinois. So that's what we did.

After a few years we broke up. He stopped brewing beer. I kept it up. Unfortunately he gave all the cool homebrewing equipment I'd given him for Christmas presents to his co-workers who had taken up the hobby. No worries, I just found other more creative ways to cool my wort than with a coil heat exchanger.

Photo Above: Teri at 25, seated & bottling, and various friends drafted to help.

Coming soon... How I Became A Brewer - Part 4